Consultation on Workshop Options

Hotel La Tour is looking to develop a new luxury hotel on the site of the CoachPark (to the east of John Lewis) in Central Milton Keynes. The new hotel willinclude 250 beds, conference facilities and meeting rooms, a rooftop restaurantand bar open to the public alongside gym and spa facilities.

Following a public consultation in June 2017, Hotel La Tour decided to host aseries of workshops run by an independent facilitator for local stakeholdergroups and members of the public in August 2017. A summary report producedby Crystal Interactive Meetings of these workshop sessions is available below:

Scheme Options

The workshops were extremely informative for the Hotel La Tour project team and as a direct result an alternative scheme design has been developed. Hotel La Tour now invite you to register your preference of the following two options:

Summary of Changes

Both options will create a luxury, 250 bed hotel, with conference facilities and meeting rooms, a rooftop restaurant and bar open to the public and gym and spa facilities. However, following stakeholder workshop sessions, the August 2017 revised design makes the following changes:

The external sky garden at the 10 th floor has been removed from the proposals. Instead a new, double height space will be created on the 14th floor.

The 14th floor will maximise opportunities for views across Campbell Park and the City Centre, creating a dynamic, multi-use space and viewing area which will be accessible to the public.

The void previously created by the 10 th floor sky garden is infilled following workshop feedback and replaced with bedrooms, meaning that an entire floor of bedrooms can be omitted - reducing the overall height of the building.

A large-scale lighting installation is proposed to the North-East facade facing Campbell Park. This light display will be developed alongside an artist, but is likely to respond to the natural day-lighting specific to Midsummer Boulevard and reflect time of day and position of the sun in its luminance, with the lighting slowly changing throughout the night. It may also be possible to develop the potential for changing the lighting to mark special city events. Whilst this is the general principle of the proposal, development work with an artist may bring further ideas forward.

The removal of the 10 th floor sky garden void has also enabled a simplification of the massing of the building. The façade is proposed to be clad with a single, more reflective material than Option A (glass or polished metal) and organised within a simplified panel arrangement into which the circular lighting feature is recessed. The reflective qualities of the building materials reference those found in other significant buildings around CMK, such as the adjacent listed shopping centre, giving an overall appearance more appropriate to its location in CMK.

At ground level, amendments have been made to improve the pedestrian and public environment, including the re-positioning of the building to create a wider walkway between the hotel and adjacent multi-storey car park. Additional windows to this elevation of the hotel have also been proposed for improved passive surveillance along the walkway. A new colonnade has been added to the building and a realigned turning circle will provide more space for seating and a new art feature.